Tag: UFC on FOX 5

Just nine days out from UFC on FOX 5, the UFC confirmed last night that heavyweight slugger Lavar Johnson has withdrawn from his prelim meeting with Brendan Schaub due to a pulled groin. As a result, Schaub has also been removed from the card, and will not face a replacement opponent. “Frustrated would be an understatement..back to the gym,” Schaub tweeted after the news broke. The TUF 10 finalist has been inactive since April, and has lost his last two fights by knockout.

Check out the short video above and ask yourself one question: Has BJ Penn ever looked in better shape for a 170-pound fight? The former two-division champ released this video on Thanksgiving — 16 days before his December 8th meeting with Rory MacDonald at UFC on FOX 5 — and the video title claims that he’s already at 175 pounds, a quick schvitz away from making his welterweight limit. And to borrow an uncomfortable running gag from the UG, that’s 175 pounds of solid, thick, tightness.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say the Prodigy might be hitting the…actually, I’m not even going to go there. But bottom line, this is what a “motivated Penn” looks like. We found him, you guys. And for comparison, this is what a trench-coat model looks like. Does BJ have one more triumph left in him?

There was a period of time, back around 2004-2005, when folks spoke about a young welterweight named Georges St. Pierre as if it were inevitable that the Canadian would one day be the welterweight champion of the world. These days, the same type of hype surrounds St. Pierre’s training partner Rory MacDonald.

Rory will be fighting BJ Penn next on the UFC on Fox 5 card but is so good and so young that he constantly has to answer the question of whether or not he’d fight his Tri-Star stablemate St. Pierre.

Before last week’s UFC 154 in his home town of Montreal, MacDonald answered questions from fans. If you hear past Rory’s dry delivery and watch the whole session (above) you’ll be treated to an earnest sounding kid, both full of confidence and hard on himself (for example, he refers to his loss to Condit as getting his ass kicked instead of losing at the very end of a fight he was previously winning).

MacDonald believes with certainty that he will become the welterweight champion one day but says that “me and Georges are not going to fight.”

The problem started on Saturday after a usual day of training, Yagin’s manager, Jason House, told MMAWeekly.com on Tuesday.

“He came home after practice, had a headache, started to vomit whatever liquids he drank and then decided to go to the ER the next day,” said House, adding that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred in training. Yagin hadn’t been knocked out or suffered from any particularly hard blows or anything of the sort.

Taking an in-depth look into the training and general fight philosophies of the UFC’s biggest stars, The NOC’s “Training Days” series is back, this time profiling UFC lightweight champion Ben Henderson as he prepares to prepare to defend his belt for the second time against Nate Diaz at UFC on FOX 5 in December. You read that correctly.

After scoring a pair of hotly contested wins over former champion Frankie Edgar at UFC 144 and 150, Henderson takes us through his daily training regimen at his gym in Glendale, Arizona. Not yet in full-on “training for Nate” mode, parts one and two give us a look at the intense shadow boxing sessions that Bendo begins each workout with. It’s not exactly the most thrilling routine in the world, but it does give you an idea at the amount of preparation that goes into the average training session of a UFC champion. Hell, you could even put these techniques to practice the next time you find yourself caught in a Taiwanese cage fight with a raged out Billy Blanks.

Pound for pound boxing champ Manny Pacquiao‘s next fight has been scheduled for December 8th, the same night as the UFC’s next Fox network show. In the recent past when the UFC has had big shows scheduled the same night as major boxing events they’ve has hoped that earlier telecasts on would catch many viewers who were planning on watching boxing later in the evening.

Things may not have worked out that way for the UFC and this development of Pacquiao fighting on a date that the UFC had already set as a Fox event might end up taking away viewers from the MMA programming. Last May, the UFC on Fox 3 featured an exciting card headlined by a spectacular title contender’s fight between lightweights Nate Diaz and Jim Miller. The free to watch event was also followed, on pay per view, by Floyd Mayweather Jr. fighting Miguel Cotto.

The UFC’s numbers ended up going down from their prior two Fox shows, while Mayweather’s win had an excellent buy-rate on pay per view. The UFC’s “come pre-game with us before boxing,” strategy might be more successful this time around if Fox promotes the heck out of the event during football telecasts as it did last year for the Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos heavyweight title telecast.

Otherwise, the UFC had better hope that Fox is taking a qualitative and long-view of things because dropping ratings on network television are never good.

With Brendan Schaub riding back-to-back first-round knockout losses against Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Ben Rothwell, you’d think the UFC would want to set him up with an opponent who was less likely to leave him staring up at the lights. Bro, not so much. The UFC has confirmed that Schaub will return to the cage on the star-packed UFC on FOX 5: Henderson vs. Diaz card (December 8th, Seattle) against heavyweight knockout artist Lavar Johnson.

Johnson most recently suffered his first loss in the UFC when he was quickly armbarred by Stefan Struve at UFC 146, but that loss followed a pair of stunning first-round knockout victories against Joey Beltran and Pat Barry. While Brendan Schaub may carry a slightly more varied arsenal than Johnson, Schaub’s main weakness (his chin) matches up terribly with Johnson’s main strength (his big-ass fists). And the Hybrid needs to find a solution to that problem, because a third straight KO loss could mean the end of the line for his UFC run.

Diaz has earned his shot at the belt with three consecutive wins over Takanori Gomi (first-round armbar), Donald Cerrone (gangsterish unanimous decision), and Jim Miller (second-round guillotine choke). Meanwhile, Henderson is a perfect 5-0 in the UFC, and just beat Frankie Edgar for the second time last weekend at UFC 150. Will Diaz be the one to stop Bendo’s juggernaut-like momentum?